ARTIFICER WHEEL CODING COMPLETE!

This is so incredibly exciting for me. The Artificer Wheel is so central to the functionality of the game. It's our Ocarina of Time, our Blitzball, our Master Chief Suit... and it's so super cool.

BUILDING A HANDHELD STARGATE

The wheel itself is a 3D object, created in Sketchup, and exported into unity. Yet again, the Mutant Sketchup Plugin Setup I use is something abnormal in the world. It allows me to create LowPoly objects at a whim. But I've never created something of this depth.

The [Z] key summons the Wheel from the UI as a 3D object. I actually spent 25 hours trying to find a way to get the 3D object to scale with the canvas, not be seen by the main camera, and keep the same dimensions on scale when called. It was... a nightmare. But totally worth it. Sometimes our usecase for unity is odd. This was one of those moments.

The Wheel Itself contains a Bar which is toggled on and off during the animations and coordinate system of the wheel turning. This bar both triggers and reset the events on the wheel. 

Clicking ACTIVUS triggers the rotation event ONLY when the word is specified using the 6 variables for each wheel. When the wheel is set to a letter (A letter is in contact with the Trigger/Reset bar, that letter is stored in a Variable. When an event is in contact with the correct 6 variables (spelling a 3-6 letter word), when the bar is pulled (using a 2D button on the UI with a transparent texture) if the word matches one of the defined events, then it 'Yells' out the word. 

TRIGGERING EVENTS ON THE CHARACTER OR IN THE WORLD

What makes the Wheel's system so cool is that anything can be made into a listener.  Meaning that there are Keywords which have listeners on the Character for things like Time Travel, Location Travel, Skills Triggers, etc. But there are ALSO nodes in the environment. One of the first words the Player gets is 'Entro'. This word will open things which should be openable, but are either sealed by magic or just too large for a normal person to move.

Secret Entrances, Magic Doors, Crypts, etc, are all openable by simply HEARING the Entro word, which is cast by the wheel on use. The wheel sees it as valid (once enabled and unlocked in the book) 

So when a keyword is clicked in the book, the wheel will spin to the word. When the ACTIVUS bar is clicked the wheel will spin if the word is valid. However, all of the content which is triggered is on the event 'listening' for the word. Meaning, that if you're in a Hotspot, in Range of the Triggered Door, or Boulder, or NPC, then using the valid word will trigger that content. If not, the wheel will work, and dismiss itself, but nothing else will happen.

This is similar to the way the Song of Storms in Ocarina doesn't always have an effect in the Environment, but always causes a song and storm. 

BUILDING GRIMM'S IRE (THE LEXICON)

There are HUNDREDS of variables associated with the book. Basically, Grimm's Innards represent the Achievement Tracker for progress through the game. Eventually, I'd like to show the icons for the opened cubes at the top of the book pages. 

For now, as you progress you toggle the words you encounter as you progress, and  the event they're involved in triggers for you, and is saved on the character for the entire run of the game. So, if you unlock 4 character names, but decide to go STRAIGHT to Emberspark in the second half of the game, you may find your pages locked for the other zones, but four keywords on the pages unlocked.

This system allows the player to go to any open zone, and play, unrestricted largely by the passage of the main story. And where it's still not a 'Sandbox Open World', because there are invisible walls, and you can't go straight to the end of the game, I'd say this is one of the most 'open' worlds for a Story Driven game which has ever been created. You should feel like you have a tremendous amount of control over both the mechanics of the game, and over where you go and when you go there.

The secondary words are the four pages at the bottom of the Lexicon. Each are words which work for Puzzles you encounter even if the words themselves haven't been discovered in that playthrough yet.

The tradeoff is, that if you haven't unlocked them in your run, you have to Enter them Manually on the Artificer Wheel. You can't speed dial like you can with the words you've unlocked.

So if you encounter a Puzzle where a 'Glyph Door' teases "Forever will you search in vain for the False Demon Lord's Name" and you know it's 'Takuun' you can enter T-A-K-U-U-N on the wheel, Activus, and that will unlock the door for you. Even if that hasn't unlocked the word for you in the progression.

However, even if you KNOW the word for one of the NPCs in Heavensreach, you won't be able to use that, or the Teleport Command until you've unlocked them through gameplay. The wheel will mark the event as a failed combination even if you KNOW it's real. You'll have to wait for the unlock in the story before you can use it.

THE TUNNELS

If I've done my job, you, the players, will feel the sense of space and time as if you're traversing them. But for me, for two years this has been a collection of hundreds of disconnected scenes. I can "see behind the curtain" if you will.

So creation of, and protection of the 4th wall is something incredibly precious to my storytelling. 

So to create the Illusion of space and movement, Moving between rooms gets a black or white crossfade whereas moving through locations via gates or fast travel uses horizontal tunnels which match the end location. For the few story moments, and the multitude of Puzzle moments when you move across the three days time traveling has the player falling through vertical tunnels toward their timeframe.

In my mind, traveling to a Place is Horizontal, and moving through time is Vertical. So to create that feeling of 'Moving' you enter one of the tunnels, customized for your end destination, each time you use one of those skills. 

MOVING BACK INTO TIME CODING

At the time of writing this, I have Art Assets to customize for the last 8 pages (about six hours) and then it's back to Wiring Up the Time events across the remaining 17 worlds. 

Initially, the Artificer Wheel was a largely unknown system I hadn't designed yet. But it came to me in a Dream (Where Jack O'neill and I were popping around spacetime for The 10th Doctor) and I sortof woke up and started the 45 hour journey to getting this incredible system built. 

This system cements it for me. There's always a developer fear that you're doing the same things, the same way, and your game will not stand out. But this is something truly unique to our game.

It's the best of the Ocarina of Time, .hack//'s Keyword System, and the travel mechanics of the Stargate all looped together into one harmonious system that also solves the challenge of an 'Unlock Tracker' and 'Progression System' in a game where you can jump around throughout time and do the content in any order you like. 

It's by far the most complicated UI I've ever created, and is at the core of the experience to come for the game. And it was something which I had to suss out before I built the MSQ. Because without it, it would have taken a massive refactor to make-rocket-go-now. This way, the Wheel will be at the core of the main story from the get-go. 

And again, even with Game Creator 2 in Unity, this was several hundred Variables, and 200+ events, each of which consist of 4-40 steps. Without the tool this wouldn't have been possible for me. With it, I've made something which I am indescribably proud of, and which sets our game apart from other games like it.

I genuinely can't wait for the players to get their hands on it and start Elder Scrolls Breaking our game. This thing will create some epic Hijinx in the experience. I'll be a responsible code monkey and finish it now.

Then go back to coding the Time Travel and Location Links via Gate so that we can actually begin putting time together. 

-Game on Friends!